Patrick Comerford
It is now 89 seconds to midnight.
Well, actually, it’s earlier in the day. I’m at the Japanese Peace Pagoda at Willen Lake in Milton Keynes. Later this evening, this place is going to mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 80 years ago, on 6 August 1945.
This year’s ceremony also recalls the bombing of Nagasaki, the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, and remembers all the victims of war everywhere.
It is 80 years since the first day nuclear weapons were ever used. And it has only got worse ever since.
We are now 89 seconds to midnight.
It is a stark warning that came from the Bulletin of the Scientific Scientists as they reset the Doomsday Clock earlier this year [28 January 2025]
They set the Clock one second closer to midnight, they say, because the world is so perilously close to the precipice. A move of even a single second is an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.
By moving the Doomsday Clock from 90 to 89 seconds to midnight, the scientists warn that we are now the closest to catastrophe we have ever been.
They list a number of alarming signals as they warn about the risk of nuclear war, including:
The war in Ukraine, which could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation.
The conflict in the Middle East is threatening at every moment to spiral out of control into a wider war.
The countries that have nuclear weapons are increasing the size and role of their arsenals, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons that can destroy civilisation.
The nuclear arms control process is collapsing, and high-level contacts among nuclear powers are totally inadequate given the danger at hand.
Alarmingly, it is no longer unusual for countries without nuclear weapons to consider developing arsenals of their own – actions that would undermine longstanding non-proliferation efforts and increase the ways in which nuclear war could start.
It is now 89 seconds to midnight.
As we have seen this year, nuclear weapons are not – and have never been – a deterrent, a way of preventing an outbreak of war.
We have seen the US and Israel use stoked-up fears of nuclear capability to bomb supposed nuclear facilities in Iran. But in all this, they never acknowledge the hypocrisy of continuing to grow their own nuclear stockpiles.
We have seen India and Pakistan – two of the covert nuclear powers – move close to the brink with a border clash, and being reprimanded by Trump and other world leaders who continue to keep their fingers on their own nuclear triggers.
In addition, the scientists warn that the impacts of climate change increased in recent months as sea-level rise, global temperatures surpass previous records, other indicators surpass all records, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
The dangers they list are greatly exacerbated by a potent threat multiplier: the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories degrade the communication ecosystem and increasingly blur the line between truth and falsehood.
The United States, Russia and China have the collective power to destroy civilisation. They have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink. They can do so, but only if their leaders seriously begin good-faith discussions about these global.
They have to take that first step without delay. The world depends on immediate action.
It is 89 seconds to midnight.
The Cold War came to an end over 30 years ago, in 1991. During those tense years, for almost half a century after Hiroshima, we were told by the United States and the Soviet Union that nuclear weapons were only there as mutual deterrents – what was called MAD or ‘mutual assured destruction.’
But instead of things getting better since then, things get worse, and they look like getting worse.
Trump is committed to a horrendous increase in his nuclear armoury, he has sent troops onto the streets against the people of his nation, and he is silencing the voices not only of protest but of critical journalists who ask basic yet simple questions.
Putin has waged war against his nearest neighbour, even critics within the system are dealt with capriciously.
Britain has agreed to take even more US nuclear missiles on British soil, unravelling all the achievements of the women at Greenham Common in the 1980s and 1990s.
All the nuclear powers, instead of using their power for good, are complicit in the use of starvation, hunger and famine as weapons of mass destruction in the Gaza Strip and the sectarian slaughters in Syria.
We are frozen in fear, a fear that is more immobilising than the most freezing days of the Cold War.
And we are 89 seconds to midnight.
What are we to do?
What are people of faith to do?
It is easy to despair when we see so-called evangelicals in America, dazzled and enthralled by the Trump regime, unquestioning in their blind allegiance, uncritical in their response, falling down before the idolatrous altar of a god-less and fear-less regime.
It is easy to despair when we see the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, concocting theological positions that justify their unquestioning and blind allegiance to the Putin state, uncritical in their response, falling down before the idolatrous altar of a god-less and fear-less regime.
It is sad when a retired Bishop of the Church of England sees fit to take up almost a full page in the Church Times close to this anniversary to twist the ‘just war’ theory to justify the continuing stockpiling of nuclear weapons (see the Church Times, 25 July 2025, p 17).
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. The bright light of the Transfiguration is a very different light to the atomic flash that consumed Hiroshima 80 years ago.
In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 9: 28-36), Peter, James and John, instead of being transfigured, are transfixed. They are terrified.
They want to remain frozen in the present or even in the past, building memorials instead of engaging in action.
But Jesus leads them back down the mountain, and leads them into action. Immediately after, he heals, he rebukes evil (verse 43-47, 49-50), he shows how valuable the children and the voiceless are (46-48), he calls us to Costly Discipleship (verses 43-45, 57-62), and he actually rebukes and condemns indiscriminate violence against civilian populations and people we are in danger of seeing as our ideological opponents, as enemies (verses 51-56).
We are 89 seconds to midnight.
But we have hope. We are called to action. We are called to speak up for the voiceless and those seen as having no value; we must rebuke violence and chastise the powerful.
80 years after Hiroshima, we are 89 seconds to midnight.
But let us not be transfixed or be immobilised. Christ calls us to go back down that mountain to act, and to be living signs of the Kingdom.
We are 89 seconds to midnight.
But we are children of light.
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